MTLNOVEL Chapter 246: The Journey To The City
She didn't take a horse. She didn't carry a banner. Instead, Xinying left the Capital City of Daiyu by the back lane after coming to a decision and didn't bother look behind her once.
Yaozu had stopped on the ridge where she had left him. He understood what her priority was when she told him to turn back with the boy, that the boy must be protected.
Even Shadow had paced three times in a tight circle, restless and protective before she caught his muzzle in both hands and pressed her forehead to his. "Guard what's mine," she'd said, quiet as frost. He whined once before giving a very human like nod, and returned to the road that led home.
And still, she kept walking forward.
Walking by herself gave Xinying more time than was probably healthy to spend inside her own head.
She remembered when Hattie and Dante were trying to teach her something, she couldn't really remeber the lesson at the moment, but she remembered that Hattie had told her that at some point in her life that there would come a time where she had to decide to do what was best for everyone else or what was best for her.
Of course, as a young woman, Xinying had immediately told the Queen of Hell that she would always chose what was best for everyone else.
At the time, she didn't understand Hattie's shaking of her head or the fact that Dante patted her on the head before the two of the turned around and walked away.
But now she did.
And now, her answer had changed.
She had taken in the considerations of others. She had lived it the moment she appeared in this world at the age of nine. She continued to do it when she had been forcefully removed from her home and brought to the palace.
She had reminded herself that she was too strong for these people. That if she truly went all out, then they didn't stand a chance.
But now, they had finally crossed that line. Finally, they had fucked around too much, and now it was time to find out what a hybrid creature like her was capable of.
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The border stones of Daiyu gave way to the pale gravel of Baiguang, and the air thinned to a brittle, high-cold that tasted like iron on the tongue. The sky hung low and heavy.
There were no stars in the vast darkness of space. Only a moon the color of old bone.
She crossed under a line of pines and felt the land change in her very being. The metal in the hills was wrong here—coarser, angrier. The road bent toward a river, and then continued forward as far as the eyes could see before it then climbed to the capital where the green-glazed tiles of Baiguang's palace gleamed dull in winter light.
But the distance never bothered Xinying. It was merely a matter of putting one foot in front of the other until she finally reached her destination.
It took three day, maybe even four if you counted the fact that she had left Daiyu when the sun was just starting to set.
Looking up, Xinying could see the lanterns swaying above the city gate, and heard the merry music drifting from within: drums wrapped in silk, flutes like thin knives.
They were celebrating something.
Of course they were.
She pulled her hood low and joined the stream of night traffic—a woman with a woven pack and a plain face, a single person lost in a crowd that no one cared to examine too closely.
The guards didn't glance twice; their attention was on the line of carts laden with millet and wine. One of them slapped the rim of a cask and joked about spring, about the fact that their Crown Prince would make the Witch of the woods submit to him.
His words and the sound of his laughter grated on Xinying's nerves, but she didn't break her stride.
The streets inside the Capital of Baiguang were narrow and busy, and split into neat wards with low eaves and carved lintels. The deeper she moved, the more the air smelled of cedar smoke and rice vinegar, of old bronze and new silk. She passed beneath a bronze bell half the size of a small house; it was green with age, hung from an iron yoke. It quivered as she walked by, as if it could sense her, as if the iron wanted to demand to be remade in its own image.
The palace walls rose directly in front of her, their dark stones and green roofs glimmering under the light of a thousand torches. With a single jump, she found herself standing on top of the walls before, once again, jumping down into the Palace of Baiguang itself.
From here, she could see the five gates in a straight line from the outer court to the ancestral hall.
Inside the palace, the torches changed to lanterns, their light painting the snow yellow. Runners trotted in felt shoes; kitchen servants hurried with covered trays; a troupe of musicians huddled near the servants' gate to warm their hands over a brazier. She paused in their wake, counted their breaths, and followed them in.
No one saw her enter the kitchens. No one saw her hand brush the iron latch as she passed through.
The metal felt like a muscle under her fingers.
She closed her palm.
Every hinge in the palace groaned.
Every bolt sank.
And every lock slid home with a bone-deep thud that rattled the lacquer on the walls.
Xinying didn't bother to hide her smile as she watched the servants stop and blink at one another. A guard at the inner corridor reached for his spear and froze when it wouldn't lift from the rack. A musician's gong stilled mid-swing—not struck, but silenced as if a hand had closed around the sound itself.
The palace sealed like a tomb.
A thin breath left her lungs. It steamed in the lantern light and vanished along with the smile on her face.
The first mist rose with the next breath she exhaled.
It wasn't a plume of smoke or even a wave of the black mist like what was seen before.
Instead, this was nothing more than a thread of disease—black as ink—curling up from her sleeves and unfurling across the polished floor of the corridor she was standing in.
It crept around the feet of a guard and kissed the ankle bones before sliding away. The guard staggered forward a step, his mouth open to say something before he sat down hard, his eyes rolling back, his lips trembling, and his throat completely closed.
He would die in a minute. Maybe two.
But Xinying didn't stay to watch.
She had better things to do.